SIDEBAR

What to do if you think you have bed bugs

- If you rent a house or apartment, call your landlord immediately and ask for pest control treatment -- if they don't respond call your municipality

- Get ride of clutter to remove hiding places

- Thoroughly clean the infested rooms and the rest of the home by scrubbing infested surfaces with a stiff brush to dislodge eggs and vacuuming with a brush attachment

- Seal any cracks, holes or gaps where bed bugs can hide, use caulking around baseboards and expandable foam around pipes and drains

- Put your mattress in a zippered encasement to keep new bugs out and starve any that might be inside

- Move your bed away from the walls and place each bed leg in a tin can filled with petroleum jelly or mineral oil

- Wash sheets, clothing, curtains and other fabrics in hot water and dry on the high setting

- Use steam to clean beds, furniture and other affected areas that can't be laundered

For more tips, call the Durham Region Health Department Environmental Health Line at 1-88-777-9613 ext. 2188

Oshawa This Week

OSHAWA -- For the past three weeks, Amanda has been getting dressed for work in her car.

The 23-year-old leaves her north Oshawa apartment building wearing her pajamas, chooses an outfit from the trunk where her pants, shirts and shoes are stored in garbage bags, and covertly changes in the back seat.

"I'm scared to keep my clothes in the apartment, I couldn't think of what else to do," she says. "It's ridiculous, I feel like a homeless person."

Amanda -- not her real name -- is one of several tenants at 222 Nonquon Rd., who is waging a losing battle against bed bugs.

I'm wearing long sleeves even though it's hot out,

She asked This Week not to use her name, because she recently landed a job at a retail store in a mall, and is terrified her boss will either fire her or tell her not to come into work, if she finds out about the infestation.

"I can't afford to take even one day off work," Amanda said. "I'm being really careful by keeping my clothes outside the apartment so none of the bugs travel on me. I'm wearing long sleeves even though it's hot out, to hide the bites on my arms."

The bed bugs are relatively new -- those who have them say they surfaced in June. Tenants say they raised the issue with the building management weeks ago, but their units still haven't been sprayed, nor have they been provided with plastic sheeting to properly discard of infested furniture and mattresses.

Julie McCarten, the building's property manager, said there is no pest problem, as far as she knows.

"Nobody has made me aware of it...I haven't heard from any tenants, I have no paperwork from the health department or the City or anyone," she said. "This building is regularly sprayed and taken care of."

Public health departments typically have jurisdiction over bed bug issues but in Oshawa, the responsibility falls to the City under its property standards bylaw.

Jerry Conlin, the City's director of municipal law enforcement and licensing, confirmed there are bed bugs in residence at 222 Nonquon. He said City officials have investigated several of the units and that calls have been made to the building owner.

So far, no fumigation orders have been issued.

Rick Stockman, the City's commissioner of corporate services, said it's the first time the City has tackled a bed bug issue and that it's taking time to iron out an approach.

In the meantime, tenants are getting increasingly frustrated.

Mike -- also not his real name -- moved into his unit in June and says a neighbour down the hall told him there were bed bugs in the building. At first glance, he didn't see anything in his apartment, then fell asleep in a chair one night and awoke with bites covering his arms and legs.

"The owner hasn't seemed too interested in taking care of this," Mike says. "It's costing me a fortune in laundry and dry cleaning and I'm not even living in my apartment right now. I think there needs to be some kind of disclosure when people move into a building. Or people need to know what to look for...I didn't know."

Bed bugs have experienced a slow resurgence in recent years, mostly in larger urban centres. In 2008, the Durham Region Health Department received 89 bed bug inquiries. The year to date number of calls is 40.

"I've been in the industry for more than 20 years and I had never done a bed bug job before three or four years ago," said Mike Fraser, a supervisor at Lloyd Pest Control in Oshawa. "Now, it's a growing problem in Durham. They are a very difficult insect to get rid of. They've become immune to a lot of products out there."â?¨ Mr. Fraser said the potential to eradicate the bugs completely rests on how bad the infestation is. If it's relatively new, he said one professional treatment and changes to the environment, might be enough. If the pests have been reproducing for weeks or months -- they lay between 200 and 500 eggs in a lifetime -- it may require two, three, or more treatments.

When it comes to apartments, it's not enough to treat just those that are obviously affected. Bed bugs can travel through pipes, between walls and under doors, which means it can be necessary to treat entire floors or entire buildings, to completely remove an infestation.

Anthony Di Pietro, a senior public health inspector with the Durham Region Health Department, said bed bugs don't transmit disease and that their bites don't make people sick, although they may get itchy and inflamed like mosquito bites.

"A bed bug bite looks like a raised, inflamed reddish welt. Often, the bugs will bite in a line," he said. "Some people see no evidence of the bites. It depends on each person's level of sensitivity. Other people may have itching for several days."

While bed bugs are tiny, they are visible to the naked eye. Adults are reddish-brown, flat, wingless and about 4 or 5 mm in length, similar to an apple seed. Hatchlings are about the size of a poppy seed, while eggs are translucent and about 1 mm in size, roughly equal to two grains of salt.

Mr. Di Pietro said the best way to check for an infestation is to look for fecal matter, which appears as tiny black spots. It can often be found on baseboards, wallpaper seams, curtains, mattress seams, box springs, around light switches and in any cracks or crevices.

Also look for blood spots, live or dead bed bugs, molted skins and eggs,

"Bed bugs are nesting parasites, they like to remain near their host when they're not feeding," Mr. Di Pietro said. "That means, you're most likely to find evidence of them in the bedroom or other places where people are sitting or sleeping."